Why I am an Island Bagger

Evenin' all,

I was recently asked to answer some questions about island bagging, and my views on islands in general, and I thought that the response I gave summed up quite nicely the reason for the passion and the excitement of the quest. I figured you might like a read?

Have a good Christmas and all that

Sam


Right, where to begin...What are the challenges of visiting so many islands? The most obvious two issues are the time and the money. For the last three years we've spent at least a full week in Scotland over the summer, and then we've also had other weekends and day trips in between, and this involves a big commitment from our holiday allowances from work. We've also spent probably thousands of pounds on petrol, ferries, hostels and planes, not to mention the twenty pounds slipped to the fisherman to run us across the bay every now and again, so there is a limit to how many islands we can get to in any given year, but then we've always said that the challenge isn't really the sort of endeavour that you want to finish too quickly, it's more fun doing it than to have done it (I suspect!). There's also the issue of travel, with Liam living in Bristol and me in Milton Keynes we quickly covered off the reachable islands in the South West of England and we've just about done the South East too now, but it's a long drive to Scotland where most of the quest takes place, so there's little option of a quick weekend away. Realistically we seem to be looking in the region of fifty new islands bagged every year, but I suspect this number will either start to drop as we finish off the easier to get to ones and each one starts taking more and more planning and time to reach.

Aside from these more general challenges, there are more specific issues that we've encountered around the coast. For example we had to go to Essex twice so that we could fit in with the schedule of the Ministry of Defence's permitted open days to visit Foulness Island, and despite our pleas and explanations the staff there still wouldn't let us on to nearby Potton or Rushey Islands, strictly off-limits - I guess this is fairly representative of the human aspect of the restrictive nature of islands, if someone wants to make an island private it's easier done than to do so on the mainland. On our approach to Osea Island we were threatened with prosecution by a signpost before we even got in
sight of the water let alone the island, so that one is still to be ticked off. Whilst some places are really welcoming and the people seem to go out of their way to help us out as much as they can, in other places we get a stony faced response and a complete lack of interest. We asked an old man in a shop in Essex the way to nearby Ray Island and he said that no such place existed, despite it being just a couple of miles away. I guess a general theme could be inferred that people from England are either far less interested in islands, or alternatively far less helpful overall, than people in Scotland.

The other main enemy when it comes to bagging a new island tends to be nature, and in particular the tide. Two instances that immediately spring to mind, once just a couple of months ago at Asparagus Island in Cornwall, and also last year at Toll's Island off the edge of St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly, me and Liam have been out bagging alone and been met with a wait of more than a couple of hours for the tide to go out so that we can cross the channel. Both times impatience meant we attempted the dash a little early and ended up with soaking trousers, and we've both said that if we had been out with some of our less hardcore island-bagging friends then they might not have been up for the wait.
Sometimes we haven't been able to cross at all, on our second trip to Essex we wound up at Bradwell Marina looking out over Pewit Island as the tide rushed in and had to give up for the day. That's perhaps the most frustrating thing, when you get within sight of a new island but you have to leave without setting foot on it, especially when it's one on it's own that will need a whole extra trip at some point in the future to finish off. Conversely there was a smug satisfaction when we made it to St Michael's Mount with minutes to spare on that same recent trip to Cornwall, as we'd last been in Marazion a year before as the tide was fully in and we had to get back to Bristol for work, it's
definitely good to go back and finish what you meant to do, though the two minutes we actually got to spend on the Mount made me think it might be worth going back a third time to actually have a look around!

Your next question needs a bit of care, and a bit of explanation first I think. First of all, it's important to define exactly what an island is, and how it can be bagged. In writing and maintaining our blog, I've come across a couple of other individuals and groups online who are also undertaking the same challenge as us, and our criteria seem to vary a little. The exact definition of an island itself can be very wide and varied, and as far as I am aware there is no universal distinction between an island, an islet, a skerry etc, and if we were to count every bit of rock that breaks the surface of the waves we'd be challenging ourselves to visit tens of thousands of tiny bits of land, so we have decided upon our own rules. To be an island it must be above the high tide mark at all times, must be cut-off from the mainland at some stage of the tide (apart from man made structures, though the causeway from Eriskay to South-Uist is close to the line), it must support a reasonable amount of vegetation and must be large enough to support 'a couple' of sheep. The definition of couple in this instance is intentionally loose. Additionally, it helps, though it's not essential, if the island has a recognised name, but we aren't against naming islands for ourselves, as we did with 'Bagger's Island' in Vementry, Shetland. I think, though I'm yet to get a definitive answer, despite badgering the
Ordnance Survey (you think they'd know) that there are about eight hundred islands that fit the criteria, and two thirds of those must be in Scotland if not more. The next thorny issue is what counts as bagging an island? We've very firmly agreed that we will only count an island as visited once we've set foot on it properly, and we always look to take a photo of everyone who's with us so that they have evidence of visiting.

Both of these rules have led to a good deal of discussion and not a small amount of frustration. We're still unsure as to the true position on whether Gluss Isle in Northmavine in Shetland counts as an island, as there is so little information published about the hump of hill far away from anywhere, but one source I've found suggests that in extreme high tides the causeway does flood, cutting it off. I'm waiting for some more official verification of this before I'm committing to putting Gluss on the list. Conversely, I was recently on a non-island bagging trip to Edinburgh and over the weekend happened to cross the Forth rail bridge twice. My Girlfriend's Nephew was puzzled by how interested
I was in whether any of the bridge supports were rooted in the soil and rock of the small island of Inchcolm in the Firth below. It transpired that it passed just a few metres upstream, but had we gone over the top it would have started a new debate as to what counted no doubt.

But of course, as you might expect, the statistical progress of the challenge isn't really the point of it at all, I've been enthralled by the idea of an island for as long as I can remember, and this is just the vehicle that gives us a reason to travel to as many as possible. From reading Enid Blyton and Treasure Island when I was really young, to family holidays in South Devon not far from tidal Burgh Island, right through my absolute love of maps and atlases to the point they plaster my walls where others would have family photos, I've always found a romance, yet also an isolation, a mystery and a poignancy about being on, and getting to, an island. So in answer to your question, the number isn't
really the most important thing. There have been some days when it's felt like we were collecting numbers just for the sake of it, like when we were in Scilly and hired a motorboat to make landfall on what seemed like dozens of identical uninhabited mounds, but a lot of the time the reward of the challenge is to find just how utterly different each island is, not just from the mainland but also from often it's near neighbours, each with eccentricities and unusual highlights of it's own. It's probably fair to say that there's usually a payoff in terms of effort with reward, as the islands that require more planning, travel and organisation to get to often exude the sort of charm that you just won't get by driving along the A road to Canvey Island. I think it's something to do with a singularity of understanding that everyone has been through the same struggles to get to, and be on this island at this time, and probably it's also true that the fewer the people present the more they need to use each other for support. It always seems that the places where memories of this sort of community spirit usually crystallize are in the pub, and to give just a few examples, the Turk's Head on St Agnes, the Mariso Tavern on Lundy and a lunchtime session in the Rousay Pier Bar have all been some of the most welcoming I'm yet to encounter.

The real success of island bagging is the whole process of spending hours in the winter poring over googlemaps and Wikipedia and ferry company timetables, and putting together a timetable to take in as many islands as possible, it's waking up five in the morning to set out on a two hundred mile journey with the sole intention of walking over a beach and up a hill on the other side, which is otherwise such an absurdly pointless thing to do. The real joy in the whole mission is to discover the lonely and forgotten corners of the British Isles that not only survive but in many cases thrive despite not having broadband or houmous at their fingertips. There's a lot of history, we've learned a lot
about Vikings and Romans, heard the name Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell where otherwise we might not, seen more Neolithic burial tombs than perhaps we really care to, and managed to pick up some rudimentary geology, ornithology and seafaring knowledge along the way. We've met countless helpful people, hiring us a car for the day on trust alone on Westray, risking being late for a wedding party by ferrying us around West Mersea harbour and helping our late night conspiring to find a way to Vaila. We never got there, but that's not really the point. We've also seen some sights that are completely unique, the sheer cliffs of the Old Man of Hoy appearing through the mist as the ferry slid by in the early morning light, the view from the front seat of the twin islander cruising at 600 feet as Northern Orkney's mess of sandy beaches and low-slung hills sprawled before us, and the steep and hidden pathways through the undergrowth on the former pirate haven of Steepholm in the Bristol Channel.

I don't think islands have really changed in my perception since we started the quest, more that they have shown themselves to be the sort of mysterious, windswept and singular places I always hoped they would be. If we ever did finish the quest I think my response would probably be to start it all over again, but would I like to live there on an island? Only if I could work from home and they had reliable broadband and a well-stocked supermarket. Maybe Stornoway?!